Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Perhaps I (Darcy) don't have what it takes to keep up a blog anymore. I probably averaged more than one post per day in my livejournal for 7 years straight or so, but I just don't spend that much time online anymore (a good thing!)

When I'm online now, it's usually to totally relax -- to watch documentaries or browse necklaces on etsy.

I think Facebook ruined blogging for me a little, not because I took my blogging energies to Facebook, but because I resisted using Facebook for so many years, and the principle of the thing -- that we should be creating real community and truly talking with our friends and going outside and experiencing things -- holds true for blogging.

At the same time, I do still love some blogs, when their purpose is in no way trying to be a replacement for face-to-face interactions. But I guess I just don't feel like I have the time in my life right now to live AND to tell about it. Or maybe I do want to tell about it, but in my paper journal. And I want to do a better job of connecting with friends.

One good thing that came out of this (well, two) is that we've started taking more photos (even if I didn't find the time to share them), AND those photos have revealed to us that we have a really great life, filled with love and laughter and food and nature. I sorta suspected our lives were great, but now we have proof.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Luna's longtime boss invited us up to her home in Birch Bay for the 4th. We stayed 2 nights and had a really good time. Someone should make a documentary film about this little town's 4th celebrations. They go all out. While the town's government doesn't host fireworks, the people invite all their friends up and each spend $1,000 on dangerous, sparkly wonders. We guesstimated that perhaps $500,000 were spent on fireworks, which could be seen by everyone else, all night, in the horseshoe-shaped bay.

I didn't have experience with personal fireworks, so I was hella scared to hold Roman candles, but they were awwwwesome. (Pictured = Darren and Barb)

Things of note: the moon, the water, the sunset, the ungodly amounts of smoke from the fireworks, the fire with which we toasted marshmallows.

Smoked tofu our hosts made, our marshmallows (why did we only bring one pack?), and the skeleton of a sand dollar mysteriously turned green.

Besides fireworks and great food, the weekend included badminton, a ridiculously small-town parade, and Lupin chasing lots of seagulls and one huge bald eagle as we walked maybe a mile out from shore during low tide.(Imagine if Lupin had killed a bald eagle on the 4th of july!)

What must Lupin have thought, leaving behind our home (this was his first night sleeping elsewhere since we adopted him), to drive far away late at night to a place where everything (everything, everything, I mean, firecrackers were thrown into the bonfire as a warm-up) everything, everything is exploding. Waking in the morning to wander chest-deep (his chest) into the sea, past the snails, then the seagrass, the sand dollars, the crabs, where the water tasted salty, started to get deeper, the apocalypse, never to see home again? But wait, we turned around! Back to shore! Where everything (everything) was still exploding!!!!!!

Actually, he handled the fireworks pretty well. The other dogs had to be drugged, but he did okay in the house where they were quieter. And during the day, he looooved sunbathing on the deck.

And then, hooray, we drove home! His home still existed! Phew!

This is actually a drawing our friend Aaron drew of/for us. When we came home from Thailand, it was waiting for us, aside a plate of cookies his lovely partner Emily baked for us.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Luna surprised me this week with a sweet set of Bamboo utensils (knife, fork, spoon, chopsticks), and they are amaaaazing.

Ok, part of the reason I find them amazing is because I don't care for metalware. (Shall I explain? Nah, maybe some other time.) So usually, be it at home or at Plum, I am using plasticware.
It takes a lot for me to be embarrassed enough of my weirdness to use an actual metal fork.
This is what I usually use:

Anyway, Bamboo! Definitely not bad to put in my mouth three times a day.

The spoon is featured here with a perrrrrfect bowl of oatmeal (made on the stove with coconut milk, water, salt, cinnamon, oats and raisins) served with the best maple syrup of all time, which Luna got from a vendor at the Georgetown Carnival.

The fork is seen here alongside a late-night dinnerish snack I whipped up -- roasted garlic, local asparagus and broccoli, mushrooms and organic tofu over garlic basil penne pasta (I had eaten a few bites before I remembered to take a picture).

Also, here's a picture I took of a bee on a chive blossom:

Have you ever had a chive blossom? They are DELICIOUS - sweet, spicy, onion-like but (obvs) with the texture of a flower. These ones were growing in the Ballard pea patch, and I may have foraged a few for myself.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Also, I just finished reading the Stranger article about the murder/rapes in South Park last year. Oh my god. I was crying so much I could barely read the words. I was sobbing so loudly that Lupin (cuddled up beside me) starting whining too (what must our little pup think, me staring at a piece of paper and sobbing while Luna sits beside us and seemingly ignores the trauma?)
Then Luna gave me a quick self defense how-to, a what-to-do-if-someone-attacks tutorial. Pen to the neck. Chopstick to the kidney. Bite the lip, nose, ear.

Luna and I were both scheduled to work at the doughnut shop today, but after about 20 minutes of set-up, another worker showed up; apparently she'd been scheduled too. Buuuut... you only need two people on a Monday, so I moseyed on home, pretty bummed that I had crawled out of bed at 7:25am for nothing (after 3 nights in a row of working dinner shifts at Pizza Pi).

To cheer myself up, I made scones with some Rainier cherries that I swear had been in our tiny fridge for like a month (but were miraculously still good).

He was so worn out from playing that he *almost* managed to sleep through the delicious smell of scones.

I used the currant scone recipe from

as my jumping-off point, but I obviously used cherries instead of currants, a little tapioca and potato flour instead of Ener-G, half whole wheat flour (instead of all white), and I added some vanilla, almond extract, nutmeg and ACV. And then I put sliced almonds on top of half of them (should have put them on all of them. OMG goooood).

Luna will be home from work soon and then I get to share them.

I accidentally shared a little with someone already.

Also, I made a box of chocolates today as a belated anniversary present. (Our year-and-a-half-together anniversary or our negative-1st wedding anniversary? Take your pick.)
I had been saving this box since... Valentine's maybe? Oh no, of course not; we were in Thailand on Valentine's Day. I guess I'd been saving the box since our 1-year-together anniversary in December, planning to make my own chocolates for Luna. There's just something so special about hand-making tiny treats for someone.

(I covered up the original brand name with a heart I cut out of a magazine.)

Anyway, the coating on all of them is just melted chocolate chips.
The insides (with a couple repeats) are
chocolate peanut butter cream
Mounds (basically)
Almond Joy (basically)
a marshmallow
mocha cream
and whole peanuts jumbled up in the chocolate.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Yesterday was our year-and-a-half anniversary. Half-anniversaries are strange, because the weather -- everything, really -- is like the exact opposite of how it was when you met. We met a couple days before the winter solstice, so our half-anniversary is just before the summer solstice.

Comic Luna drew for me of our first kiss. He gave it to me on our second date (in which he cooked Pad Prik King for me and we danced around the carpet to Edith Piaf). The comic hangs above our bed now.

We met when night was at its longest, but falling in love at the very start of winter meant basically getting the cheat code to skip winter. That first night, when we met, after the symphony, after dinner, we found ourselves on the swings at Cal Anderson Park, and I was wearing a dress as low-cut as the one I wore yesterday.

"Do you ever get out of the city?" he asked me, and he stumbled over the words a little bit, like he was nervous.

"Not really. I don't drive so I haven't really seen much of the state yet."

"Would you like to? We could get a cabin on the coast."

Our first date. And we both had this realization that this was not a first date conversation, but we also realized that the normal rules didn't apply.

I got off my swing and went over to him, somehow shared the swing with him (haha, I think I straddled him?) and we kissed, and I said, "I would love that."

And two weeks later we were sharing a little A-frame in La Push, hiking through the rainforest and making vegan s'mores.

He wrote our names, with his finger, on an Artist's Conk (Mushroom)

It was the first week of January. We held hands and ran into the ocean together, then immediately ran back out, freezing and giggling.

Ancient tree!! We set the camera timer for this picture, because we were alone (people-wise) in the forest.

Now it's supposedly the start of summer, though I felt as cold yesterday (sitting on a boulder together at Magnuson Park, by the lake, laughing at our awesome dog, then trying to soak up the failing sunlight while having a dessert picnic in the parking lot of PCC) as I did a year and a half ago when we met.

Conclusions:
This particular spring and summer are pathetic excuses for sunny seasons.
Luna will keep me warm, come spring or summer or winter or fall.
Desserts are delicious.
I need to take more pictures, especially if I'm going to keep up a blog.
We're in love.

P.S. I've been very busy this week, overwhelmingly so. I was imagining I'd be blogging every day, but now I see that that's something only my funemployed self could do. Since I haven't been posting, I haven't pushed myself to take pictures, but we have had some delicious food this week, and here's one example:

Chilaquiles Luna made us for breakfast -- Corn tortillas scrambled with tofu (and veggies, in this case), topped with salsa and "sour cream" (garlic aioli on this one). I was feeling under the weather, slept for about a million hours straight, then woke up to this. Yummm.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

The conflict:
My desire to talk passionately about some thoughts* I had while reading Derrick Jensen's Endgame - Volume 1 - The Problem of Civilization
vs
Luna's desire to spend the evening quietly.

The solution:
Cuddling and watching YouTube videos of Lopburi, my favorite place in Thailand the world. Where else can you, for $7 a night, stay in a hotel surrounded by chainlink fence, which monkeys (macaques) climb on all day and night (except of course when they're sleeping together on your roof in big piles, grooming each other, sunbathing on the temple ruins nextdoor, swinging from power lines or stealing your iced coffee).

Here are some photos we took there:

(taking food from a vendor's cart!)

the tourism office

Lopburi, three hours north of Bangkok via train, was a TINY town (a few blocks by a few blocks, filled with monkeys, street food, super-friendly non-English-speakers and preteen boys playing video games in internet cafes), but it had an incredible outdoor market with all kinds of fresh food (and according to our guidebook, a "vegetarian pavillion," though no one we asked about this -- ahahn mangsawirat utinai? -- could point us in the right direction.) Anyway, it would have been an incredible time to have a kitchen (over 2 months in Thailand without a kitchen - aside from my one-day cooking class - was toooough.)

We bought snacks (Chinese donuts and hot soymilk from a street vendor, iced coffees (kaafae mai sai nom), bananas and raw veggies to feed us AND the monkeys, and the market food pictured below) and took most of our meals from a little outdoor Chinese restaurant set up right in the park, where everyone (but us) knew everyone and everyone was laughing and talking loudly non-stop.

bulk rices for sale in the outdoor market

bulk curry pastes

Pineapple, tofu, raw veggies, iced coffee, and what we thought was coconut cake, but what was actually coconut cakewith roasted garlic on top. We had a picnic at the playground with the strange/awesome outdoor exercise machines. We also bought a teensy bottle of soy sauce and packet of crushed peanuts, which we used to season the tofu with.

(So your hands don't get cold? Too much plastic.)

Another reason Lopburi was one of our favorite places (as if another reason is needed) was that it was the first place we rented a scooter ($5 a day) and experienced intimate travel, completely off the tourist track. Wading in the reservoir, climbing the mysterious steps to find a Buddha at the top, miles kilometers of sunflower fields, the mountaintop wat (temple) and the non-English-speaking children who befriended us, thousands and thousands of bats flying out of the cave at sunset, riding back on the scooter, towards the monkeys as the sun finished setting, wrapping my arms around Luna, our bodies pressed together, and hearing "Jenny" by the Mountain Goats playing over in my head. Knowing while it was all happening, that, yes, this was the best day of my life, that I'd thought that yesterday was the best day, but nope, this day was even better. But that's another story.

*
(The aforementioned book)

There's a lot there to get passionate about. Last night, my focus was on the idea that everything everyone says or does is predicated by unspoken premises. Many of these premises, if spoken, we would agree with. If, for example, I looked into Luna's eyes, giggled, and gave him a kiss, I am acting on the premise that he likes me and that I do not have to ask before kissing him. Also, I have the premise that I should do things (like kissing) that make me happy and that it will make him happy too.

Other premises, though, if they were spoken, most people would not agree with. Despite this, they underly a lot of our daily lives, as Americans anyway. They are the reasons for the problems of the word (inequality, environmental destruction, etc) and yet we do not see them, because they are so ubiquitous.
Examples of these premises:
It is OK for those with power to do anything (anything) to maintain that power. It is not OK for those without power to do anything to try to obtain power.
Living things exist to be used by humans.
Things (living or otherwise) can be owned, and to own something means to be able to do anything to it one wants.
Owning things is good.
etc etc etc.
Anyway, I'm not doing the best job of explaining this, because there are so many premises that it's hard to even know where to begin.

If anyone wants to hear more, I recommend the book, and/or I'd love to discuss it with you. If the discussion gets heated (which apparently could happen, even if we completely agree), we'll just watch videos of monkeys to cool off.